I'm so dang excited to jump into all this.  I don't even really know where to begin so just bear with me because I WILL cover everything.  I think I want to start with a lil' editing in photoshop.  It really just takes a good picture - to it's most awesome potential.  when you see a picture and think how do those eyes sparkle so much and how is that color so bold and vivid, it is because they used some techniques in photoshop that you are all going to learn... here.

Let's start with "levels" and "curves".  This just makes the picture pop.  These are always the first two things I do to my pictures, it sets it up perfectly if you want to throw an action on it later on.

Levels - adds some depth and brightens

Curves - bumps up contrast, brightness, and color.

Here is my picture straight out of the camera (SOOC).  Looks nice but needs a lil' help.

Open up your picture in photoshop... click the button in the bottom lefthand corner that's a half black and half white circle (as shown here).

Now slide the left mini triangle to the right and see how it adds some "blacks" or more depth to the picture. Let's brighten it a bit by taking the middle mini triangle and sliding it to the left.  Each picture will need more or less tweaking, but this is fun to play around with to get the look that you want.  I tend to favor pictures with more of the blacks brought out.

Now go ahead and click that same circle button where you will see "curves".

Here you will see a graph looking thing.  Place a dot in each of the places that is shown below and ever so slightly take one dot up and the other dot down.  This is what is called an s-curve.  Even the slightest movements go a long way.   You can see here that this particular picture only needed a little umph.

 

Here is the before and after.

Okay, I know, not a big difference, but try out these techniques on some of your pictures and you'll be amazed with the difference it makes.

Now the only thing bugging me is how dark the shadow is on the left side of her face so let me tell you a tool I use ALL the time - the dodge and burn tool.

First I dodged (made lighter) the left side of her face and her eyes, and then burned (made darker) some of her tutu so it would show up a lil' more. Keep in mind I keep the exposure at around 15%.  You'll see where you can change that at the top of the screen when you click on either the dodge or burn tool.

Okay, I'd say a big enough improvement that takes about 1 min to do. From here I would be ready to add an "action" to make it fit more of my style.  Or you could just sharpen it and call it good.